Return of the Book Thread

[K9]

Cool cool, I'll put that one on the back burner then. Currently finishing up Hemmingway's 'For Whom The Bell Tolls'. It's good, but fuck me is it slow.

[Simond]

The first book is deceptive. It's really good epic fantasy and makes you think the other 11 volumes are worth the effort. I made it through 5. If you don't like copious descriptions of dresses and annoying character traits repeated ad inifinitum in the place of actual character development, don't fucking bother.

Yeah, read the first one then make up your own ending. Or just read any other "young farm boy turns out to be the Hero Of Legend" high fantasy series - I quite like the Belgariad; it's full of clichés but Eddings knew that clichés exist for a reason and used them as tools rather than props.

[Quinton]

I thought the first WoT book really felt like a retread of a lot of previous explored ground (Tolkien and forward).  Then Jordan seemed to find his feet and diverge from stories I had known before, and there were some interesting things in the next couple books, but then around the 5th or 6th book it just really bogged down, and I finally gave up on the series after the 8th or 9th book.  I keep thinking about finally finishing it someday, but there's always something more compelling to read.

[satael]

I gave up on WoT at around book 6 but it felt like something that would've worked as a (long) trilogy for the main story and the rest as separate books.

[Rendakor]

For Wheel of Time, read books 1-7, chapter summaries online for 8-10, then read 11-14. It's a pretty good read, all told, but those middle books are pretty terrible with the sniffing and braid tugging.

[Salamok]

My Wheel of Time experience was that the 1st 3 books are about as good as this type of story gets and the last 3 books are worth reading, everything in between was a mess.  After all was said and done though I would rate the entire reading experience higher than a Song of Ice and Fire, I did however enjoy that for entirely different reasons.

As far as good SF/F reads I would recommend:
Byzantium - Lawhead - religion infused historical fiction.
The Red Branch - Llywelyn - Irish mythical/historical fiction.
The Seventh Sword trilogy by Dave Duncan is a decent high fantasy light read.
The Forever Hero trilogy - Personally I think this is the best of the Modesitt space opera (no Mormans in this one).
This Immortal and/or Eye of Cat - I prefer both of these to Lord of Light myself, I find it odd that Zelazny's shittiest book is the one that was made into a movie (aka don't read Damnation Alley).

[Chimpy]

Best (in my opinion) Fantasy books that are not a "coming of age" young adult story that I can think of off the top of my head would be in no particular order:

Faerie Tale - Raymond E. Feist (I think it is his best book, it is not one a lot of people have read)
Magic Kingdom for Sale - SOLD! - Terry Brooks (Don't bother with the sequels, they are not worth it but the first one is original enough)
The Dragon and the George - Gordon R. Dickson (If you like it enough, dig into the sequels, they all are kinda formulaic but are fun)
Coldfire Trilogy - C.S. Friedman (nothing to say other than if you like fantasy and you have not read it, you should)
Song of Ice and Fire - George R.R. Martin
Way of Kings - Brandon Sanderson (confusing at first but gets engaging pretty fast....may turn into a coming of age trope in later books as he is planning it as part of his magnum opus)

I am sure I could come up with others but those all kinda fit the requested area.

If you want something that is very good yet still in the "cliche" vein, I always enjoy re-reading the Memory, Sorrow, and Thorn trilogy by Tad Williams. Everything is just well laid out and the characters tend to be more interesting to me because they all have faults, no one is perfect.

[lamaros]

Best (in my opinion) Fantasy books that are not a "coming of age" young adult story that I can think of off the top of my head would be in no particular order:

Faerie Tale - Raymond E. Feist (I think it is his best book, it is not one a lot of people have read)
Magic Kingdom for Sale - SOLD! - Terry Brooks (Don't bother with the sequels, they are not worth it but the first one is original enough)
The Dragon and the George - Gordon R. Dickson (If you like it enough, dig into the sequels, they all are kinda formulaic but are fun)
Coldfire Trilogy - C.S. Friedman (nothing to say other than if you like fantasy and you have not read it, you should)
Song of Ice and Fire - George R.R. Martin
Way of Kings - Brandon Sanderson (confusing at first but gets engaging pretty fast....may turn into a coming of age trope in later books as he is planning it as part of his magnum opus)

I am sure I could come up with others but those all kinda fit the requested area.

If you want something that is very good yet still in the "cliche" vein, I always enjoy re-reading the Memory, Sorrow, and Thorn trilogy by Tad Williams. Everything is just well laid out and the characters tend to be more interesting to me because they all have faults, no one is perfect.

Ice and Fire is massively coming of age IMO. Only the first one (the best) avoided it better than the rest.

[Sky]

I wonder how Elric holds up, I read those when I was a kid and they were so filled with awesome. And of course Howard for pulp adventure.

Black Company! 

[Ard]

I personally thought the older elric books still held up fairly well when I reread them a while back.  A great deal better than a handful of other books I reread from my teen years (Hickman and Weis... just... urgh...).  Ended up reading a really large chunk of his older works due to the anthologies white wolf put out back in the 90s.  That said, he's one of the authors from the same era as Zelazny where they had to constantly churn stuff out to make ends meet, so not everything is exactly gold.  I haven't read his last few newer books though.

[JWIV]

I wonder how Elric holds up, I read those when I was a kid and they were so filled with awesome. And of course Howard for pulp adventure.

Black Company! 

Elric/Corum/ETC certainly shows its age a bit, but still holds up reasonably well.  Jack Vance's Dying Earth stuff remains spectacular as well.

[satael]

If you you don't mind coming of age stories then Robin Hobb is one of the best fantasy writers in my opinion.

[Ingmar]

Moorcock's characters are incredibly one dimensional, I don't feel like it holds up at all for me, in particular because a lot of times I find the prose just very flat. The Elric stuff does hold up a little better than, say, Count Brass, but still none of it really grabs me now at all.

Vance remains pretty awesome.

[satael]

Moorcock's characters are incredibly one dimensional, I don't feel like it holds up at all for me, in particular because a lot of times I find the prose just very flat. The Elric stuff does hold up a little better than, say, Count Brass, but still none of it really grabs me now at all.

Vance remains pretty awesome.

Elric/Corum (or any of the reincarnations of champion eternal) are ok but Jerry Cornelius is definitely my favourite Moorcock

[Sky]

Has anyone read the Grey Mouser and Fafhrd stuff? That recently came up somewhere.

I'll have to queue Vance's stuff when I finish this hurried read of Zahn's Cobra Trilogy (tough for me to read three books this quickly, but it's an ILL and we have to be the gold standard of lending etiquette because we're trying to crack down on some horrid lending practices, I know TMI, shut it).

[Ingmar]

I've read (and read again) all the Leiber stuff, yeah. It's fun, and IMO probably the biggest influence on Gygax's D&D design other than maybe Tolkien (and Vance).

[Khaldun]

Leiber is still fun though it honestly blurs together some for me, the same way most of Howard's Conan stories do or for that matter Lovecraft's work--the signature mood and feel of the stories and mythos is always strong but after a while the details of any given plot just sort of blurs. I am surprised in a way that Fafhrd and the Grey Mouser have never achieved the iconic status of Conan in any other medium, because they seem so perfectly qualified for that.

Agree on Moorcock. I went on a jag of re-reading old Corum and Hawkmoon stuff and it's just incredibly bland feeling to me now. Elric still has some play in him because he's a more interesting character and because a lot of his stories have a relatively good Moriarity in Theleb K'aarna--a nicely personalized, not-the-end-of-the-world kind of rivalry.

[proudft]

A lot of the Leiber stories would make great movies.  Swords of Lankhmar would make an AWESOME movie.  His language, though, is really the best part of those books.  He's with Vance in the goofy use of weird thesaurus words that are just awesome and frequently hilarious.

[Khaldun]

Yeah, as a stylist he definitely reminds me of Vance at many points. Vance and Lieber are the kind of writer where if you sit for a sunny afternoon reading him and then look up a few hours later, you feel like you've just had your fever broken or the drugs are wearing off--the language pulls you into a mood, a sensation, a kind of feeling.

[Margalis]

That's definitely true of Vance. The writing is more the main attraction than the story itself.

[Soln]

Leiber is definitely worth reading.  Thanks for the reminder and other suggestions.

Anyway we can sticky or compile a  SF/Fantasy list in the first post?  I know I'm going to ask the same question again.

[Samwise]

Anyway we can sticky or compile a  SF/Fantasy list in the first post?  I know I'm going to ask the same question again.

I would but I don't want to go pick through the thread to figure out which books go there.  I may start an "F13 Recommended Reading List" thread solely for that purpose, though, because that sounds worthwhile.

[Sky]

Yeah, that would be cool.

Vance and Leiber are going on the short list for when I finish this last Zahn book. The Cobra books are pretty early and rough Zahn, and he's no literature anyway...just decent action stuff that moves along pretty well. I'm pretty shallow when it comes to reading :)

[Hawkbit]

I just started Gene Wolf's Book of the New Sun series.  Hard to start, but looks as if it will be fairly awesome once I can get past the barrier my brain has with his writing style.

[ghost]

Gene Wolf is a badass.  Those are some of my favorite books. 

[Margalis]

A list of recommendations would be good, but only if limited to a couple picks per person. Otherwise it's going to get crazily out of control.

[ghost]

Will the Black Company be on the list?

[Rasix]

At the very top.   

Coincidentally, I started reading one of the Zahn Star Wars books on vacation.  It was so bad I decided to do my first reread of The Black Company.  Blew through the first two books in no time. They're a lot shorter than I remember.  My physical copies are in really poor shape.  I must have picked these first few up at a used book store.

[rattran]

I slogged through a Gene Wolfe series. Never again.

I'll go out on a limb and recommend a non-Black Company series: the Garrett books by Glen Cook. Fast reads of fantasy noir, goes off the rails for a few books in the middle of the series (like Black Company and Dread Empire did) but they're back to decent with the last few.

[Reg]

The latest Garrett book read like it was the end of the series. Are we sure there's going to be another?

[rattran]

He's had a few that seemed like an end. I think he'll keep writing them until he dies.

[RhyssaFireheart]

Rereading Way of Kings already, kind of doing it along with the Tor.com reread, which is an interesting thing, IMO.

I also picked up the ebook Mortal Instruments: City of Bones mostly because of the movie.  And it was under $5 which is an easy price-point to snare folks in with.  Figured I'd give the first book of the series a try and see what it's about; I don't mind YA stuff.

[Mattemeo]

After reading a couple of duds, I started in on a book I have been meaning to read forever - Scott Lynch's "The Lies of Locke Lamora". Just barely into it, but it's got me hooked right away. Really enjoying it so far.

A good friend sent me both The Lies... and Red Seas Under Red Skies. Definitely the best new Fantasy author I've read since Steph Swainston (though he seems to have a bit of a track record with eliminating strong and interesting female characters just as you let your guard down). It did take me a while to get into The Lies... due to the initially florid nature of Lynch's writing style and his use of flashback exposition but after about 80 pages or so, he'd charmed me into it. Red Seas... read considerably easier but didn't quite have that initial impact of the first book. Plus I kind of wanted to strangle him over a character death. Very much looking forward to the new one in October (have it on pre-order), plus there's also a chance Lynch might publish the Gentleman Bastards shorts soon after.

[Mattemeo]

That's the way I feel about Good Omens by Neil Gaiman and Terry Pratchett. I must have read it a dozen times by now.

Pretty much my all-time favourite book. I've had to forgo rereading it on a yearly basis - my much loved, very battered and Pratchett-signed paperback just can't take it anymore.

On the other hand, they're putting out a very, very spiffy new hardcover reprint in October. If I can get that signed by Gaiman I'll be very happy.

[Rendakor]

Is that only coming out in the UK? Good Omens is one of my favorites as well, but I can't find that to preorder on the US amazon webpage.